Teen Titans S01E13 Review: Robin's Father

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 13: Apprentice, Part 2

What an explosive finale! While the Titans are all worried about where Robin has disappeared off too, Slade sends Robin in to steal something for him, with explicit instructions not to say anything to his friends and to fight them, lest Slade blows them up with the little nanoscopic probes. This goes for a bit as the Titans go from shocked to reluctantly defending themselves, and I really loved how the Titans tried their best to fight non-lethally, but Robin being forced to, well, go for the figurative kill makes it really heartbreaking when they had to fight each other like that. 

We get a truly brutal moment as Robin aims his newly-acquired thermal blaster at Starfire, who stops fighting and tells Robin that if he truly is evil, she will allow Robin to shoot him. It's a very heartwarming (and shippy!) moment, and Robin actually lowers his gun right until Slade threatens to kill everyone with the nanobots and forces Robin to reluctantly shoot Starfire. Yes, the injuries are non-fatal, but the voice acting and animation make it convincing that Starfire is really hurt -- physically and emotionally -- by this.

Slade encourages Robin to actually fight him like a Starscream, because, well, Slade isn't stupid. He doesn't expect immediate obedience, and rather he wants to break Robin down. The fact that Robin ends up getting outclassed by Slade in this confrontation is excellently done as well, delivering the great show of how creepy and manipulative of a villain Slade is. 

The other Titans aren't completely useless as Cyborg discovers the little nanobots and ends up heading down to confront Slade, wanting to take the risk to bring down Slade, probe or no probe, and this touch of friendship, injects himself with the same probes and makes a gamble. Slade hates to lose, and if Robin dies like this, then Slade's main objective and goal -- to corrupt Robin -- would have failed. Granted, Slade destroying the controller instead of simply shutting it down is a bit of an odd plot development, but it's dramatic all the same, and it's great that it ends up taking the entire team to defeat Slade, showing that, yes, Robin is strong because of his friends and not weakened because of it. 

It might not be perfect because why Slade doesn't have a backup plan for activating the probes, or why he can't just selectively activate them or whatever, but it's a great emotional showdown between Slade and Robin, highlighting how different they ultimately are where it counts, and how despite Slade's attempts at breaking and conditioning Robin (clearly still in its early stages), he's still entirely uncorruptible. Plus, Batman references!

Overall a great first season finale and it exemplifies that even with the kiddification and the more comedy-centric tone that the series has, it's not afraid to explore darker themes and is great at storytelling. Robin doesn't get a lot of chances to really shine in later seasons and takes a bit of a backseat while the spotlight focuses on other characters, but, man, these few plot episodes really work at selling Robin as a really interesting character to me, and it truly is a climatic and exciting season finale. Can't argue with that. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner

• The battle against Slade and Robin happens on the rooftop of a Wayne Enterprises building. Wayne Enterprises, of course, is the company owned by Bruce Wayne/Batman, who is Robin's adopted father and mentor.
• When Slade tells Robin that he may come to see Slade as a father, Robin replies "I already have a father", which immediately cuts to a scene of bats flying across with a little riff of the Batman: Animated Series theme playing. Again, a little sneaky reference at Batman. 
• One of the comics that Beast Boy shows the other Titans in his conspiracy theory for Evil Robin has the title 'Static Shock', a lesser-known DC superhero who had a TV show at around the same time. 

Teen Titans S01E12 Review: Darth Robin

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 12: Apprentice, Part 1

Ah, season finales! As far as season finales go, Teen Titans always go for a more serious tone... though this being Teen Titans, there's always some comedy to the whole thing. Having Starfire's allergies to chronotron particles being an actual plot device is hilarious, but the two-parter's focus is still on Robin and Slade. Like 'Masks', this episode shows how similar Slade is to Robin, and as previous episodes have built up, Slade doesn't really care about the generic supervillain plots that other villains in the show like Mad Mod or Trident or Mumbo has, and I don't think it's exemplified as beautifully as the insane plot device, the Chronotron Detonator, being a dud. No, we're not dealing with the generic city-destroying-bombs, blob monsters and armies of robots that are in our comfort zone.

We're dealing with Slade, and the fact that his plans really revolve around Robin. Getting Robin to be obsessed with Slade, forcing Robin to understand that Slade is better than Robin in combat, and Robin's increasingly desperate and unhinged attitude throughout this episode and the instilled paranoia as Robin gets more aggressive, threatening to beat up random construction workers and snapping under the pressure at his friends is all too human and a very great display of how much Slade is corrupting Robin. It's very subtle and very dark for a kid's show that has villains like Mumbo and Control Freak, yeah?

Cinderblock shows up for a minor role as Slade's flunky, but like everything else, it's just a mere pawn to get Robin and Slade alone, and their fighting scene with the very atmospheric shadowy clockwork tower thing is awesome as all hell. Slade's big plan is to make Robin his apprentice, but he's also not stupid enough to believe that Robin will join willingly despite their similarities, so he injected the other Titans with nanobots that will basically explode and kill the other Titans. The episode ends with the chilling show of Robin's uniform being discarded while he dons a Slade-inspired uniform.

Definitely a great episode and an excellent setup for a confrontation between Robin, Slade and the other Titans.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• I have never talked in-depth about Slade's origins, have I? Well, it's a good time to do so as any. In the comics, Slade Wilson is the alter-ego of Deathstroke the Terminator, though this cartoon uses 'Slade' as the codename instead of Deathstroke because, y'know, censorship. In the comics Deathstroke is a mercenary and less of a criminal mastermind, but his obsession towards the Teen Titans and especially Robin (well, Nightwing in most of their clashes) is still more or less the same. Deathstroke has experienced a big resurgence in popularity in recent years, showing up as enemies to both Green Arrow and Batman, though he is still the quintessential Teen Titans villain in the comics. 
• The opening sequence of Robin unmasking Slade and finding his own face is a reference to the dark cave in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

One Piece 844 Review: That's Different

One Piece, Chapter 844: Luffy vs. Sanji

Well, that's different! Everyone and their mother thought that this confrontation was going to be at least more than a little similar to the Luffy/Usopp fight, except, y'know, Sanji can fight a lot better than Usopp can. But no! Sanji is trying to drive Luffty and Nami off, telling them what stupid peasants they are, and unleashing a barrage of Diable Jambe techniques, but Luffy? Luffy sees through it all, knows that Sanji's just faking, which is excellent. As entertaining as it would be to see two of the strongest members of the Straw Hats fight, seeing Luffy actually use his head is very cool.

Luffy just stands there, tanking every single one of Sanji's hits both physical and verbal. Nami gets to slap Sanji one time, but I think she knows, too at the end, though earlier in the fight Nami seems to actually be fucking scared of what's going on. Maybe there was a message exchanged between those two during the slap?

That screaming session as Sanji cries in the carriage, as the bloodied face of Luffy just shouts about how every single hit from Sanji hurt him more than it hurt Luffy, about how Luffy will stand there and wait forever, and starve to death, if Sanji doesn't come. It's a very touching moment, a very awesome moment that puts this in a different light than the Robin situation as well -- whereas Robin has just accepted her fate as not being allowed to find happiness, and it needed Luffy and friends charging in to show her that there are people who love her, Sanji knows all of it. It's the combined reasons of being afraid of what's going to happen Zeff and the other Straw Hats that's preventing him from taking a stand. In a way, it's forcing Sanji to basically be the main character and make his own stand against his family, which I can't wait to see.

There's really not much to say about this chapter, because it's just one long confrontation between the two that's pretty well-written. I like this chapter quite a lot. 

Gotham S03E05 Review: Love Dodecahedron

Gotham, Season 3, Episode 5: Anything For You

Is it February already? Because last week's episode of Gotham was almost entirely devoted to characters vying for affection. If not the romantic kind like Gordon/Valerie, Leslie/Gordon, Butch/Tabitha, Bruce/Selina, then it's Butch and Riddler vying for Penguin's "love" as his favourite henchman. There's definitely a bit of obvious shipping thrown our way, especially on the Penguin-Riddler front. And for the most part? It's actually enjoyable, hilarious, fluff.

The main plot centers around an attempted assassination plot on Penguin by the Red Hood Gang -- a nice callback to the little piece of Batman's lore from Gotham's earlier seasons -- and Penguin going on a huge warpath on the bastards that shot up the statue of his saintly mother. Butch is revealed to hire the Red Hood Gang to shoot things up so Butch can play the hero and slay the Red Hoods, while Riddler finds something suspicious and uses his own riddling and detective skills to figure out that Butch did it. Then it's a fun game of blackmailing each other and threatening each other for them to look heroic in front of Penguin, and it's honestly just an insane series of scenes that I can't help but really, really enjoy myself in a way that Gotham has never done for me before. The fact that you're never sure if Riddler was being super-faithful to Penguin or just being your typical villain and planning to take over Penguin's place is also a very fun point that makes this plotline really fun. 

I really expected Butch to die in this one (the show hasn't made him interesting at all since the Gallavan arc, asides from the one bazooka scene) thanks to Riddler's machinations, but Tabitha became relevant as well and apparently heads off to rescue his man. I've never liked Tabitha at all since season two, and I don't care about her at all, but Butch was fun in this episode. Really fun.

Yeah, some of the other extant plotlines happen. Barnes is struggling with the Alice blood and apparently goes all Mr. Hyde near the end of the episode. Mad Hatter is being fucking creepy, dressing a random girl as Alice and killing her. Ivy shows up to remind us that she exists. Leslie's engaged to Mario Falcone, and blabs about this to Riddler. But the main part of the episode? 

Romance.

From Butch forcing himself to pretend to try and kill Penguin so Tabitha won't be hurt, to Tabitha going off to rescue Butch, to Bruce finally confessing his feelings in typical awkward manner to Selina ("I'm confused." "Good."), to Gordon barging in on Valerie seemingly using her womanly wiles to get information for the Jervis Tetch story, to Leslie seemingly baiting Gordon for a reaction regarding the whole engagement thing (huh?)... yeah, how can you not see Penguin and Riddler's not-kiss embrace as anything but meant to be romantic? The only real reason is that Penguin has been mostly asexual throughout the series, being far more obsessed with either getting power or being a good mommy's boy, but his talks about finding someone to share his victories in and the shocked and overwhelmed face he has when he hugs Riddler... I'm not sure what I think of this sudden change, but damn if it isn't entertaining.

I dunno. It's a pretty solid episode, and while probably not one of the best to have come out of this show, it's one of the most fun. 

Teen Titans S01E11 Review: Fast & Furious

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 11: Car Trouble

I didn't really like this episode that much as a kid, though my opinion of it has improved on rewatching it now. The main plot is a simple 'boy loves his car' moment, with Cyborg going absolutely goo-goo-ga-ga with the newly-created T-Car, bordering on the obsession that honestly a lot of people have with their shiny new cars. On the way, the T-Car gets carjacked, of course, and it ends up finally at the hands of Gizmo, a recurring villain from the first episode, and Cyborg ends up finally destroying the T-Car to defeat the other villain of the episode, Overload. I've used to think that it's a filler episode that overran its 'Cyborg freaks out over his car' gimmick to the ground... but it's a lot better than I thought.

Sure, Gizmo is slightly annoying, Overload is a one-note character (though a cool design as a chip able to manifest a giant electrical body) and the Cyborg-swoons-over-his-car gets boring after a while, but the relationship between Cyborg and Raven, and the moments they have, are really well done. Raven acknowledging the importance that the T-Car has to Cyborg, yet also nothing that it's ultimately, well, just a car that can be rebuilt, and Cyborg himself ending up growing up enough to blow up his own car so that he doesn't let the villain run amuck is great stuff. And the ending showing Raven being more open and actually helping Cyborg to rebuild the second T-Car is pretty cool.

I don't really have much to say, really. The plot's straightforward, the villains are one-note (Gizmo is at the height of his annoyingness here) but it holds up better than I thought it did. So yeah, it's a pleasant surprise.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While there is a minor Flash villain called Overload, he has absolutely nothing to do with the show's Overload and it seems like the dude's original to the show. Man, the DC Easter Eggs Corner is very thin in these Teen Titans episodes, yeah?
• Metropolis, Superman's city, gets mentioned by Cyborg early in the episode, one of the few moments where the other non-Teen-Titans DC characters get mentioned. 

Pokemon Top Tens: Best and Worst of Generation VI

Cutting it close to the release of Sun and Moon, here is the final installment of my top ten favourites (and top five least favourite) Pokemon in Generation VI. The sixth generation is a bit of a different beast due to the... very little Pokemon that we got. Technically we got a crapton of Mega Evolutions, but I already did a Mega Evolution list a while back, and this is more about the species that are truly native to Kalos... of which there really aren't a lot. Add that to the fact that a lot of earlier-generation Pokemon are so common in Kalos... my team throughout Y certainly was made up partially of older faces like Venusaur, Aerodactyl, Blaziken and Zoroark... hey, I can't help it! I want to use those fancy-ass Mega Evolutions, and handing me a Generation I starter just isn't the way to really promote the new dudes.

I don't really have much to say, so let's just go with it.

#10 Fennekin

Come on, foxes are adorable.

My starter for Generation VI is Fennekin... and honestly, as much as I tried to like Fennekin, he's just a bit overshadowed by... well, the far-more-awesome Greninja from the same generation, for one, but also by other Fire-starters. See, in XY you get a Speed Boost Torchic for free thanks to an event, and you're also handed a Generation I starter about a quarter through the game, so the Kalos starters honestly feel a bit pushed aside. And while Fennekin is possibly one of my favourite basic-level starters, his evolution kind of leaves something to be desired. A fox wizard is cool in some way, but Delphox's huge, gigantic ear-hairs just puts me off, and his in-game model really could've looked better. Also the fact that he's a bit of a one-trick pony in terms of being a huge glass cannon, and while I normally enjoy these kinds of fragile-but-powerful Pokemon like Chandelure, Zoroark or Espeon... Delphox just isn't as impressive as any of those dudes. Out of the starters I've ever used, I am quite sad to rank Delphox as the lowest among them, and I definitely used Venusaur a lot more than him.

Fennekin, though? Fennekin is adorable. The nice contrast between orange and red, the cute little flame ear-hairs that aren't quite as randomly huge as Delphox's, and generally being adorable as all hell. And while I like nine more Kalos Pokemon more than Fennekin, I still really like him and he's still the Generation VI starter that impressed me the most. (Mine is called Kurama because I have no creativity in giving nicknames)

#9 Noivern

He's got the sonic and the boom.

Noivern is just a badass monster, isn't he? He's a Dragon/Flying, which isn't something new, but he's this gigantic dragon bat that looks like a wyvern, like a gargoyle, and the black main colour is accentuated very well with teal and purple, and the little sound gimmick, with two giant speaker-ears on Noivern's head, makes Noivern just a very cool monster. I honestly genuinely thought that Noivern was going to be the pseudo legendary of the region, either the middle or final evolution. Noivern's still pretty fucking awesome, though, and it's a shame that he gets relatively little spotlight in the game, only really being used by one of the Elite Four members. And beyond looking pretty awesome, I really like how Noivern is a nice variation of the bat design, focusing on a sleeker hunter than the stylized, more cartoony Zubat line, or the furry and cute Woobat line. Noivern just exudes power, with a more realistic, predatory look, and incorporating the supersonic echolocation as a part of Noviern's abilities to use sound-based attacks. Certainly a lot cooler than Exploud's gigantic and gross mouth.

#8 Goomy

<3

Goodra is a bit underwhelming, though I don't exactly hate him... I just feel that it's a bit weird that a huge slug dinosaur is pure-Dragon instead of, oh, Dragon-Water or something. Goomy, though? Goomy is just a cute little purple slug blob! Goomy is just adorable, just this cute little goop that's adorable in the cartoon, in the fan arts, in the games... He's just this little blob that is also a fucking dragon by the way, eat your hearts out, Charizard, Gyarados, Lugia, and all of you. Goomy is this little adorable blob that you can just imagine just plops on your head and just hang out and just be happy about everything that's happening. Goomy's cute. Also he's a slug-dragon. How can you not love him?

HE IS FUCKING ADORABLE, OKAY

God of Venison

#7 Xerneas
I got Pokemon Y, but Xerneas is very awesome. I wasn't sure about his design at first, but I've grown to be really impressed by him. He's a powerful and majestic looking deer, with the metallic blue and the golden sword-legs, as well as a very impressive antler that when activated looks absolutely regal with those pretty-ass rainbow glowy stuff. As far as legendaries go Xerneas isn't the most creative, just turning a deer slightly more metallic and giving him a pretty awesome rainbow antlers. And while I really wished they had made the antlers not quite so insanely large -- Xerneas must get a crapton of neck pain -- he's still a pretty majestic Pokemon that higlights the more regal and powerful side of this brand-new Fairy type, and Xerneas is just a beast, arguably the most powerful among the Kalos Life/Death trio. Geomancy isn't a joke! It's a Pokemon that I genuinely just love because of his design.

#6 Klefki

Jingle Jangle Motherfuckers

A lot of people hate on Klefki. Either because of his uninspired design ("oh, a keychain Pokemon?") or because of his absolutely irritating Prankster ability that allows it to paralyze all of your team before they can do jack shit. But I love Klefki's design! He's not a keychain, he's a little fairy that looks like a keychain, going around stealing keys. Klefki's just the silver portions. And the combination of 'kleptomaniac' and 'key'? Brilliant! Klefki taps into the more mischievous side of fairy lore, and adds a nice reminder that not all fairies are just cutesy Flabebes and Clefairies that just want to hang out and dance and play. Some of them are outright glorious dicks, and Klefki is one of those.

I never raised a Klefki, but my friend raised a very, very irritating and competitive one, who had been the bane of my existence. Steel and Fairy, as it turns out, makes a pretty deadly combination that cancels out a lot of each other's weaknesses, with nothing short of Earthquakes (eliminated with an Air Balloon) and Flamethrowers able to cleanly take a Klefki out. Being fairy type means that this keychain is a dragonslayer, and being steel type means that it's as toxic to other anti-dragon fairies. Jingle jingle, motherfuckers, this adorable little keychain can fuck up Pokemon gods. What do you have to say to that? I absolutely love Klefki. What an insane fucker. I just imagine real-life Klefkis being supreme shit-eating trolls.

#5 Greninja

Suiton: Suiryudan no Jutsu!

Greninja's just awesome, okay? Yeah, the anime focuses on him too much and made that stupid Ash Greninja thing, but man, Greninja is hands-down the coolest of the three Kalos starters. A sleek frog ninja with long arms? Its dark blue colours is supremely cool, as is its head horns. The tongue scarf is honestly a bit gross, but whatever. I also absolutely like how Greninja's eyes can swap out between being half-asleep if he's in amie, and serious mode in battle. He's not just a master ninja, he's also a very chill frog dude in his downtime. And he's actually fucking terrifying in battle, too. Greninja's hidden ability is Protean, which literally changes his type depending on the attack he's using. Uzumaki Naruto, get out of the way, Greninja is a true master of ninja arts!

Water Shuriken is an absolutely cool attack, too, and it's extra awesome in the anime when he goes full, well, Naruto-style Rasen-shuriken with water. And his other signature move, Mat Block, just has him hitting down the floor and summoning two ninja mats to block attacks for both him and his buddy. Greninja is Water/Dark, which is a very appropriate typing for a frog ninja, but like a true ninja he's utterly unpredictable, able to launch a barrage of surprisingly diverse attacks. His fragility is almost of no consequence because Greninja will swoop in, strike hard, strike fast, swap between his multiple attacks to always hit for STAB damage, and absolutely wreck an unprepared team. My competitive Protean Greninja... actually came from a Trade and he has a Japanese name. In my head I call it Koga after the Generation I gym leader (Jiraiya is too obvious of a nickname).

Let's ignore the existence of Ash Greninja, shall we.

#4 Talonflame

The Bane of Smogon

Talonflame is another one that's rendered annoying by competitive play, because it's a bit silly, to be honest. He gets priority for all Flying-type moves, which he already deals huge damage due to his respectable Attack stat, STAB and the ability to hang on to a Life Orb. But in addition to Brave Birding every single living thing on earth, Talonflame is also able to Roost, meaning he can heal upwards to half his health before the enemy can react. Talonflame is just a beast, and he's a very, very cool-looking starter bird, possibly the coolest among them now that I think of it. He's also the first that actually breaks the Normal/Flying mould by being Fire/Flying. He's got a very cool name despite it just slapping two words together, he's got a very cool design, and, I dunno. I just really like Talonflame's design, okay? I don't even care that he's irritating as all get-out in competitive games, basically far worse than Big Game Hunters and Dr. Booms in Hearthstone. I don't give a fuck, mostly because I don't really play competitive games, and in all the competitive games I play seeing a Talonflame run smack dab into a Ferrothorn and killing itself, or crippling itself by attacking an Aegislash is hilarious. I just kinda love Talonflame. Mine is called Mockingjay because of Hunger Games. It's a bit obvious, really. Girl on fire, bird insignia and all that. Nothing much to say about Talonflame. I really like Fletchling, too! What an adorable little robin he is.

#3 Hawlucha

LUCHA LIBRE

Oh man, I don't really watch a lot of actual wrestling, but I absolutely love super-hammy, exaggerated parodies of wrestling shows and the sheer hammy energy that goes into crafting these colourful luchadors. Bleach's Mask de Masculine is easily one of the best and most hilarious part of its meandering and ultimately truncated final arc, and Hawlucha is just... this absolutely ridiculous, brightly-coloured wrestling bird that goes around punching and kicking people and doing insane suplexes, and I really am sad that this isn't better represented in the games. Hawlucha is 100% the only reason I bothered to look up anime episodes after missing out on everything between Hoenn and Kalos, just to see the ridiculousness of this fucking bird pulling off a wrestling takedown on things like Ursarings and Machamps, and in every single goddamned scene he is in the background of, Ash's Hawlucha is just posing and posing and doing all sorts of hammy flexing moves. Hawlucha is just awesome! His wings form a cape, his facial marks resemble a luchador mask and he's even got a FLYING PRESS special move that allows it to jump into the air and press the motherloving hell out of anything unfortunate enough to face it. Oh, and Hawlucha has access to the very first dual-typed moves ever, which is awesome as all hell. Yeah, I really like Hawlucha. I named mine El Masculino.

#2 Yveltal

All will BURN beneath the
shadow of my wings.

Yveltal truly blew me away when I saw the XY trailer. Xerneas is a fancy-ass deer, and it's a regal legendary Pokemon, and then this thing just flies through the skies, this majestic death bird that's all black and red, with claws at the ends of its wings and huge tail, a very badass looking beak and those two cool curved horns. Yveltal is just very cool looking, and his lore? He is literally the embodiment of death. If he's alive, he's going to lay destruction to everything on the world, killing everything and all. If he dies? He sucks all the life in a huge radius to itself, leaving people around it dead anyway. There's no fighting this thing unless you're Xerneas. And honestly it's what makes Pokemon Y's story flow so much better -- weaponizing Yveltal makes so much more sense than weaponizing Xerneas.

Yveltal can do a kame-hame-ha style laser beam that tears apart the ground like a space laser, appropriately named Oblivion Wing in one of the best animations in the entirety of the Generation VI engine. (Tangentially, Palkia's Spacial Rend is also very awesome in the Gen VI engine) And, yes, he does look a bit like a bacon bird, but he's still awesome. And have you ever played with a Yveltal in Pokemon Amie? Despite being a monstrous demonic bird that is the flying embodiment of death, he just has the cutest bwaaaa expression when you're patting his head or feeding him macaroons. I just really like Yveltal. Mine is called Deathwing after the Warcraft dragon of death, and Deathwing is coincidentally Oblivion Wing's Japanese name.


Honourable mentions!

• Trevenant: It's not what I would make if I was told to design a demonic ghost tree -- for one, I would use slightly less bottom-heavy proportions -- but man, Trevenant is an awesome thing nonetheless. From the root-legs, to the single glowing eye, to the ghostly black... stuff... in-between the wooden pieces, and the pretty inspired Grass/Ghost typing makes Trevenant a cool Pokemon in my books. 
• Tyrunt, Flabebe and Inkay: They're all so adorable that they fall into a category of Pokemon that I never want to evolve. Tyrunt is an adorable, adorable baby tee-rex that transforms into an overdesigned dinosaur that really could've used a lot less weird random details glued onto it. Flabebe is an adorable little buddy hanging on to the petal of the flower, and while Florges is cool, I like Flabebe a lot more. Inkay is an adorable floating baby squid that's Psychic/Dark for some reason, that evolves into a pretty disturbing-looking calamari witch. 
• Sylveon: Big fan of the Eeveelutions, and Sylveon is actually a very well-designed Pokemon in my opinion, being the right amount of cute and cool. Even if those ribbons are, like, flesh-ribbons or some shit. Her eyes are particularly adorable.

#1 Aegislash

BANKAI!

And my favourite Pokemon... is Aegislash! What an awesome dude. Honedge and Doublade were honestly cool on their own, these poltergeist Ghost/Steel swords that suck out the life force from their owners if you try and wield them like an actual swords. But Aegislash? Aegislash is this gigantic broadsword with two sash-arms and a huge, ornate golden shield. And he alternates between crossing his arms and holding the shield in front of him, or revealing the sword, ready to attack. This manifests in the very awesome Stance Change ability, which allows Aegislash to swap around his (tremendous) defense and attack stats around depending on whether the move he's using is an offensive move or King's Shield -- a variation of Protect that debuffs the enemy if they come into contact with Aegislash. Aegislash is both a tank and a monster in attacking, with his very awesome Ghost/Steel typing allowing an insane range in the Pokemon it can hit. My Aegislash, Kenpachi (named after my faovurite character in Bleach, a manga all about powerful swords), is a monstrous tank that debuffs enemies with King's Shield, buffs itself with Swords Dance while hiding under huge defenses, then one-shots people with STAB Iron Heads and priority Shadow Sneaks. You can even teach it a variety of other elemental powerful physical moves like the Fighting-type Sacred Sword and the rock-type Head Smash, the Dark-type Night Slash. It's a shame you can only get four moves and King's Shield is basically mandatory.

But Aegislash really earned by love when I dabbled in competitive. While I had to bred most of my team -- Talonflame, Rotom, Greninja, Azumarill, Mega Kangaskhan, Ferrothorn and a whole bunch of others I probably talked about before -- Aegislash is the only member of my competitive team that made the smooth transition from being part of my in-game party straight into the competitive scene, partially because of his already appropriate nature and somewhat-decent IVs, but it's definitely brings a huge smile to my face when I use a partner I've traveled and relied on during the story mode to challenge these hyper-competitively-bred Pokemon.

Plus Aegislash is just super-cool! He's a Pokemon that attends kings and secretly manipulates them. What an evil fucker! And I really like how the entire Honedge line has different animations in Pokemon Amie when you touch their sashes. A freshly-caught Honedge won't give a shit and is actually happy when you touch his soul-sucking sash, but be buddies with your sentient ghost sword and it will actively admonish you for touching the soul-sucking sash. Aw, it doesn't want to eat your soul anymore!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Here are my top five least favourite Kalos Pokemon. It's a bit of a difficult choice because I just can't work up the energy to talk shit about any of these five the way that I talked about Bouffalant or Throh or the elemental monkeys or Jynx or Unown, and honestly these are the worst simply by process of elimination.

#5 Furfrou
I really expected Furfrou to evolve, or to have something going on for him beyond just having customization of his hairdo in a very irritating concept that forces you to go to the salon multiple times. Yes, it's a take on poodle dogs and all, but Furfrou's alternate forms don't even look good, other than the pharaoh one which made me laugh. I dunno. Being pure-normal and a very boring moveset and sub-par stats make raising one honestly a bit pointless, especially when you can customize your trainers in the same game. Who's going to bother with this messy-haired dog?

#4 Quilladin
Chesnaught is my least favourite of the three final evolutions of the Kalos starters, but I don't hate him. Quilladin, though, is just weird. I dunno, maybe it's because he looks a bit too much like a balloon? Chesnaught is supposed to be the 'warrior' to Delphox's 'mage' and Greninja's 'rogue', and their middle forms -- Braixen and Frogadier -- both reflect this change from cute baby animals into warriors. Quilladin turns from a cute squirrel into... a balloon.

#3 Avalugg
I just don't really like Avalugg. He's just... this big chunk of ice... that's shaped like a tortoise? With a very, very flat back? A table, perhaps? Avalugg's head looks like he's either smouldering in anger or in pain all the time, and he's just this weird chunk of ice. I dunno. Bergmite's very cute, but Avalugg's just kind of ugly.

#2 Diggersby
Kudos for making Diggersby not a pure normal-type, but holy shit, did they have to make Diggersby so ugly? I don't hate Diggersby as much as I do Patrat and Watchog, but I still dislike him. The ear-shovels are taken to a ridiculous extreme, and he's got a huge donut wrapped around his fat fat belly. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Diggersby is his in-game cry, that sounds like a bulldozer's death throes. It's just painful

#1 Aromatisse
I really liked Spritzee. She's this cute little pink bird with a plague doctor mask, and her in-game model makes her look even cooler than her artwork. I expected her to evolve into a larger bird, or maybe a cloaked plague doctor -- a Fairy/Ghost type? But no. Instead, we get... Aromatisse. Who's this big plump thing with a boa and a provocative leg shown and it's supposed to be, what, a cabaret dancer? I dunno. Swirlix turning into Slurpuff makes sense, but Aromatisse just looks like a bit of an abomination.

Teen Titans S01E10 Review: Silly Symphony

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 10: Mad Mod

A fully filler episode and the first of Teen Titans' tradition to have an utterly batshit crazy episode every season, "Mad Mod" introduces us to this insane British fellow, the titular Mad Mod, who has trapped the Titans in a psychedelic Wonderland themed on schools and British visual jokes. It's an episode that people absolutely love or absolutely hate. It's an exercise at how ridiculous they can be, with some segments basically being "Teen Titans in an anime rendition of Looney Tunes". It really felt like it was made on drugs, but it's rather hilarious.

That said, though, spending the entirety of the episode on just a single comedy character isn't the basis for a good episode. It's memorable all right, as 'that weird episode where the Titans are stuck in a British Escher painting", but Mad Mod's just a crazy British fellow and the Titans just stick to their relative stereotypes throughout the episode. It's a bit of a surreal experience, and the eventual reveal that it's all part hypnotism and part mechanical props is honestly just weird because throughout the episode it really felt like Mad Mod's trickeries are so much more powerful than what props would have, and Mad Mod's pretty one note and ends up being repetitive around halfway through. 

Oh well, as far as insane, throwaway episodes go, Mad Mod isn't the worst we'll get, and is a pretty harmless fun episode, and it did entertain me as a kid... but while it isn't as bad as some of the episodes we'll get later in the series, and certainly isn't as bad as X-Men's attempt at a ridiculous fun episode (Mojo *shudder*) it certainly isn't the best the series has to offer, even from a comedy standpoint.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Mad Mod is an actual Teen Titans villain from the comics, and is actually one of its first villains. Neil Richards was a fashion designer who used his fashion store as a smuggling front. And he dresses in the Mod fashion style popular in Britain at that time. That's about it, really. 
• There's a lot of random pop culture references (that I don't really care about) but one that stands out is Robin activating a secret switch by lifting a bust of Mad Mod's head, a reference to the Adam West Batman TV show. 

Teen Titans S01E09 Review: Red X

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 9: Masks

Each season generally focuses on a Titan for its 'plot' episodes, and this is the first plot episode for the first season. We get the focus on Robin in this season, where his investigations about Slade starts to reach nowhere, and he starts treading the line between good and evil by posing as the supercriminal thief Red X to steal several items and try to get into Slade's good graces and infiltrate his organization.

Of course, the big point of Robin's plan is that he doesn't tell his friends so he can make the fights look authentic, with the excuse that Robin has been defeated by Red X earlier (with a prepared hologram at one point) or having him be elsewhere when Red X battles the other four Titans. It's a pretty well-executed little gimmick, and while older audiences would see it coming around the second Red X scene, it's a pretty awesome twist for younger ones, and the scripting for Starfire and Robin is top-notch in this episode.

Slade makes it clear that he knows all along that Robin is Red X and he's just stringing the kid along, to play on Robin's obsession at bringing Slade down... which ends up causing a rift between Robin and his friends. This episode has Slade saving Robin from certain death, which really is the first hint at why Slade is such a conventional and surprisingly dark villain. He isn't really interested in stealing the chips or domination or whatever. His endgame goal is to corrupt the Titans for the sake of corrupting them, and we'll see more of this in the season finale. It's pretty creepy and pretty dark, especially since for a younger me, the villains I've seen fighting good guys are people like Joker and Lex Luthor who want to kill people just for laughs or for power, whereas Slade? Slade just wants to corrupt heroes, turning Robin into a miniature version of him, and to break the Teen Titans apart from the inside.

Red X is a pretty cool costume, isn't it? A cool skull-head, the ability to shoot bloody X beams and just generally being awesome... it also shows how despite being the only member of the team with no real superpowers, Robin was able to disable and take down the rest of the team, a testament to his skill. Yeah, granted, he knows where all their weak points are, but still, it's a cool Batman-esque moment right there. 

I thought the final scene of this episode is one of the most poignant moments of the series, with Starfire confronting Robin in his darkened room, saying sadly that Robin and Slade have one thing in common: they don't trust anyone. And that's a surprisingly sad and somber ending to a Teen Titans episode. A really excellent episode that really focuses on Robin's character, with both Slade and Starfire being excellent foils to him. 

Agents of SHIELD S04E04: Lola vs the Ghost Rider

Agents of SHIELD, Season 4, Episode 4: Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire

After the more filler-y episode last week, the fourth episode brings the entire team together as Aida, Quake and Ghost Rider are all brought into SHIELD in differing ways. The main plot of the episode had Quake fool Simmons into showing up and enlist her help in tracking down the leak within SHIELD that allowed the Inhuman list to leak out to the Watchdogs. Simmons and Quake do this little buddy cop routine as they head off to try and protect an old rehabilitated enemy, James (a.k.a. Hellfire). What happened to James was one of the unanswered questions of the third season's finale, and it's hilarious that he's just working in that fireworks shop.

It's a bit of an obvious plot twist that Hellfire's actually evil, but credit to the actor's acting, I actually bought it when he gives his speech about how he's just trying to live a normal life, how the fireworks are a reminder of what happens when he breaks loose, just like his coworker's cigarette butt. And when he reveals his complicity with the Watchdogs, painting himself as a self-styled hunter of his own kind and later being the last one to die, is actually far, far more depth than James had gotten all throughout the third season. 

Meanwhile, Coulson and Mack catches up with Ghost Rider in a very, very awesome car chase scene involving Lola and Ghost Rider's awesome muscle car, and Coulson ends up getting Ghost Rider to trust him enough as an ally, getting Ghost Rider to get a story out of his imprisoned uncle. We don't exactly get to learn much other than the fact that the ghosts are trying to create some kind of impossible matter-creating machine, and it blew up in their faces and turned them into ghosts, but it's nice now that the in-show character knows. And Lucy the ghost wakes up her husband, and they're going to get this Necronomicon Darkhold book.

And, well, holy shit, that final battle between Ghost Rider and Hellfire, with Robbie catching the flaming chain and then transforming? That was awesome as all hell. Coulson's line about how it's inevitable how two fire guys falling into a fireworks shop is also hilarious.

Quake's single-minded pigheadedness to just try and rescue Inhumans all the time, pushing away all her allies and demanding or guilt-tripping that they help her when she needs them is finally confronted by both Coulson and Simmons, and Coulson tells her to shut up. The Watchdogs may be hunting the Inhumans, but they have bigger problems. More eldritch, ghostly problems. 

Meanwhile, Aida finally meets people outside of the Radcliffe/Fitz team, talking to May who really, really likes her for being all business. We also get May cursing in Chinese (eat dog fart) which is hilarious. Simmons immediately sees Aida and knows she's an android (which causes Fitz to try and cover up the possible misconception that Fitz is hanging out with Radcliffe to see a pretty lady) and doesn't really care, before realizing that she has to care to Director Mace... not just about Aida, but possibly about a whole bunch of other things she went through in this episode.

Speaking about lying, Radcliffe has this long conversation with Aida how sometimes it's okay to lie if it's to save someone's life, though in this case, it is Aida's own life. Will this turn out badly, or will it lead to a heartwarming moment later on down the line? Who can say. I'm really interested in the Aida story, to be honest.

It's overall a pretty cool episode, very solid. I'm not sure if the Darkhold and ghost stories have enough substance to make me actually care all that much, because right now it's knowing the stories of Ghost Rider, Aida and Quake that're the main appeal of the show. So far, it's definitely working. 

Legends of Tomorrow S02E02 Review: Legends of Yesterday

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 2: Justice Society of America

Bit of a mini-announcement. I'm putting weekly TV episode reviews on a bit of a hiatus. Real life's going to be very, very busy for me for the next month or so, meaning I don't have a lot of leisure time to watch a crapton of TV every week. I'll periodically post reviews whenever I catch up to an episode or two, but don't expect them to be too regular. Sorry about that. Cartoon and manga reviews should be progressing normally. 

Anyway, this episode! It's still a solid episode, even if not a lot of the Justice Society actually got much screentime after the initial very awesome fighting scene against the Legends of Tomorrow. How awesome is that scene? Obsidian putting out the lights by raising his hands to the sky and just expelling a crapton of shadow is just awesome, as are Stargirl shooting her starbolts, Dr. Mid-Nite doing his daredevil vision and Vixen summoning the strength of a gorilla, and they absolutely dominated the Legends. And, to be fair, only Canary and Firestorm are really fighting at full strength, but still. It's an awesome scene that made me all squee-y inside.

Stargirl, Doctor Mid-Nite, Hourman, Obsidian, Vixen and Commander Steel

So it's a shame that practically everyone else became window dressing after the end of the fight. Oh, sure, they show up and fight a bunch of Nazi troopers throughout the episode, or bounce dialogue off of Commander Steel, but Stargirl, Dr. Mid-Nite and Hourman basically get relegated to background decoration while I don't think poor Obsidian even got a line. Vixen and Commander Steel got the most focus, with Vixen being shoehorned into a respect-slash-romance nonsense with Ray Palmer that had almost as much chemistry as the Ray/Kendra romance last season (which is: none), whereas Commander Steel had some actually decent moments with his grandson Nate Haywood.

I think the two Haywoods are the highlight of the episode, personifying the concept of carrying a legacy of a team of superheroes far better than the bickering and the Ray/Vixen anger-fest ever did. Commander Steel doesn't want to be a hero, nor does he want other people to emulate him. And as Sara repeatedly tells Nate, he isn't a combatant, and neither is he suitable to be in a battlefield because he's apparently a haemophiliac -- his blood can't coagulate properly, and a small injury can mean death. But partially because he's inspired by the heroism of his grandfather, Nate's insistence to join in the battle and live up to his legacy -- especially when the Legends are put down several times by the JSA for being a dysfunctional team -- is very interesting to follow. As the newcomer of the team, this episode cements Haywood's characterization as well as making him a fair bit more interesting. Also, the injection of the super-serum might've saved his life, but I'm betting this is going to be what turns him into Citizen Steel. 

Equally interesting to follow is Martin Stein's short stint as leader of the Legends. With Rip dead (a fact that I actually forgot until it was pointed out in this episode), the Legends have been operating without a proper leader, and the JSA quickly zeroed in on the old, white man, Martin Stein, as the authoritative figure, a position that went to Stein's head in a hilarious way. In-between his absolutely beautiful rendition of Edelweiss, to his hammy Max Lorenz acting to infiltrate the Nazi bar, and him finally admitting to Jefferson that he's not cut out for this, it's a lot of great characterization moments for Stein, as oddly forced as this part seemed to be. Eventually Stein passes on the torch to Sara, a field commander who everyone in the team respects.

Ray and the 40's Vixen have this angry spat about how Ray isn't special without a suit (Vixen, without her totem, is a kickass martial artist) and it's a bit of a drag compared to the Stein and Haywood plotlines. Poor Ray has been the least interesting character in the cast, which is a huge shame considering how good the actor can be, and how much I love the Atom as a character. But here we get another series of generic plotline as Ray tries to prove that he is a superhero even out of the suit. (Ray refusing to play along and just salute Hitler is a bit dumb, though. Patriotism and all, yeah, but you're in a deep cover mission. Uncle Sam knows you didn't mean it.)

Vixen herself also felt like the weakest member of the Justice Society despite having arguably the second-most screentime in this episode. She's one of two women in the Society, and one of two coloured people... in a secret superhero team based during World War II, and while no one ever mentions gender or race as being inferior -- Steel eschewing Sara for Stein as the leader aside, plus that one Nazi douche in the bar -- Vixen is so weirdly subservient to Commander Steel and Hourman, going all "if it please you" and "if I may" all the time. Weird.

How fun was it for the Justice Society to have that stupid Powerpuff-Girls style red telephone in their base? That was hilarious. The fact that they're secret and not public knowledge (Nate only knows because of his grandfather's participation in it) explains why no one is aware that superheroes existed in the CW verse. 

The main enemy in this episode is one Baron Krieger (a.k.a. Captain Nazi to the DC fanbase), who's given a super-strength serum by Herr Thawne (hee hee). Reverse-Flash himself doesn't do much this episode other than showing up at the beginning to talk to Krieger, and later show up in the end for some old-fashioned Flash-style "Reverse-Flash does something unexpected and deadly at the end of an episode". In exchange for the super-serum, Reverse-Flash wants Krieger to get a certain mystical artifact for him, which he later takes himself anyway after showing up and killing Hourman, thus explaining Hourman's disappearance after the warning. I really wished we had actually spent more time with Hourman in this episode, because he shows up going "I... never met you crazy guys" and then alternating into just being a boring mission control that I forgot existed 90% of the time, before being killed off. Maybe swap out Vixen for Hourman as the character that received focus this episode? Minor quibble, though.

Krieger's steroid-muscle form didn't quite look as spectacular as Obsidian's shadows or Mid-Nite's blind vision, though, actually looking quite ridiculous in some shots. The fact that he randomly takes out half of the JSA/Legends team, before proceeding to be taken out rather unceremoniously by an air strike adds to the slight disappointment of him as a villain, though he was quite effective when he's just an evil Nazi military officer threatening Ray to reverse-engineer the serum for him. 

It's a lot of set-up, and maybe the JSA didn't do as much as I would've liked, but honestly, looking back on it? It's very, very enjoyable and I squee'd. So many times. The first fight between the Justice Society of America and the Legends of Tomorrow really was the biggest fangasm moment in the entirety of the CW universe, matched perhaps only by the penultimate episode of Flash's first season when Green Arrow, Flash and Firestorm stood together to face off against Reverse-Flash. Maybe it could've been better served if the team-up wasn't focused on Ray and Vixen -- the latter being honestly a boring character compared to CW's previous attempt at Vixen -- but the Commander Steel and Martin Stein bits really make up for it. And honestly, I did seem a bit too harsh after rereading this review, but man, I loved this episode. I'm a big JSA fanboy, and seeing a live-action version of them? Spectacular.

One last thing before I close off this review. That heroic riff that seems to be the JSA's theme, playing as we get the panning shot of the JSA standing over the defeated Legends? That was an awesome piece of music. Almost as awesome as hearing Victor Garber sing Edelweiss to a room filled with superheroes and Nazi soldiers. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• We talked about the origins of the JSA members last episode, so there's not a lot I can talk here. Baron Krieger, in the comics, is Albrecht Krieger, better known by his un-subtle moniker Captain Nazi. He is a Nazi super-soldier, albeit in more Captain America than Hulk, and was created by a Nazi super-soldier program to create someone who can combat Captain Marvel. He's more or less just an angry Nazi villain, really. An alternative would be a different Nazi villain, Baron Blitzkrieg, who shares the 'Baron' title... but Blitzkrieg has already made an appearance in Arrow as a modern-day, non-Nazi and non-German villain, showing up with his real name, Baron Reiter, as the villain in Arrow's exhaustive season four flashback plotline. Captain Nazi seems to fit this Baron Krieger better than Blitzkrieg, so we'll go for that.

Teen Titans S01E08 Review: Talking to Fishes

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 8: Deep Six

"Deep Six" gets the rap as the worst episode of season one, and while rewatching this season I don't think it's the worst (I dislike "Forces of Nature" and "Car Trouble" a lot more, I think) it has the simple crime of being... boring. We are introduced to another supporting Titan, Aqualad, who is Aquaman's sidekick from the comics. Aqualad has ditched his stupid comic costume for a cool blue-black wetsuit and a has grown his hair long to attract the ladies, but other than his cool design, he isn't really that impressive. The entire episode's premise has Beast Boy being absolutely hostile to Aqualad for no reason despite Aqualad just being a nice dude who ends up getting justifiably pissed of at Beast Boy's 'sabotage' of their mission.

And Trident (who borrows his name from a classic Teen Titans villain, but has nothing in common) is a very bland villain. He's a mutated fishy Atlantean, but the big plot twist of just how Trident is able to be able to be everywhere at once has been spoiled by, well, two Tridents showing up to attack that random ship. 

In the end, the plot suffers from being predictable and boring, and while I liked Aqualad's design, he doesn't really do much in this episode to really impress beyond talking to fish, and the constant bickering between Beast Boy and Aqualad honestly is just aggravating after the first few clashes. The fact that Aqualad has a generic 'hero' personality doesn't help matters either. I don't think this episode is outright bad... it's just one-note and repetitive, and there's only so much variations of 'Beast Boy is an unreasonable dick to Aqualad' you can do, and there really is no reason for Beast Boy to be so overtly suspicious and angry of Aqualad. He's shown to be a bit of a prankster, but never the gloryhound or the paranoid type -- and the whole Terra arc hasn't happened to him yet, so it really felt like an odd scripting decision. Plus the fact that despite the constant bickering and eventual friendship, Aqualad and Beast Boy doesn't actually defeat Trident by teamwork. They just escaped by dumb luck, with Beast Boy distracting the Tridents and causing them to fight each other, before buggering off and sealing them in an underwater cave. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Aqualad, real name Garth, is the sidekick to Aquaman, and was one of the five members of the very first incarnation of the Teen Titans, which back then was actually made up of sidekicks: Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, Speedy and Kid Flash. While he wasn't a member of the incarnation of the team that the show is based on, Garth would be a constant ally as Tempest (who has a far cooler costume than Aqualad) and would be a member of several other incarnations of the team. His costume is based on one of Aquaman's older costumes, 
• Trident in this episode is portrayed to be an angry fish-man and a native of Atlantis. In the comics, Trident is a group of three people who share a stupid purple-yellow costume and a powerful fire/ice shooting trident. They have nothing to do with Atlantis, and were operatives of HIVE. Like the Trident here, the group's ability to attack several places in the city at the same time while the public and the Titans believes them to be the same person is a central gimmick of the villain. It's... not one of DC's best villains, to put it mildly.
• Aqualad's sidekick Tramm is original to the show, but his design would be used in the creators' next project Ben 10 as Grey Matter. 

Arrow S05E03 Review: MISTER TERRIFIC FUCK YEA (Also, Deadshot)

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 3: A Matter of Trust

It is a cruel, cruel bait and switch for them to open the recap with teases to the Flash episode that established that Flashpoint might have changed a few things and caused some other changes beyond the gender of John Diggle's child... and then to show that Diggle's new cellmate is a suddenly-alive Deadshot, who brushes off his survival with "eh, never found the body." And apparently it's not a Flashpoint-assisted revival of a character who's death is all but caused by WB muscling in on DC properties... but just a guilt-induced hallucination.

Mind you, Deadshot playing cards is, in retrospect, a sign that it's all in Diggle's head how he associates the guilt he's having with both Deadshot and the fact that he killed Andy. But still, it's a very cruel moment to be for all the wrong reasons when I realized that Deadshot isn't actually in the cell. Unless he showed up, played some cards to dick around with Diggle, and when Diggle wasn't looking he snuck away while giggling.

That said, Diggle's sub-plot is a lot better here than the previous one, where he confronts the fact that he's still feeling guilt over killing his brother, HIVE or not. The random decision to serve time for a crime he didn't commit was a dumb move, though, that's for sure.

Oh well. The rest of the episode is pretty standard. We get more development on the Neo Team Arrow, as the main lesson of this episode is trust and accountability (which kinda ties with the Diggle thing up above). The Thea B-plot has her deal with one Susan Williams, who's making all sorts of headlines painting Oliver as this fool who doesn't even know what's going on in his administration. Thea's attempts to fix things makes it worse, and she is prepared to resign. But at the end of the episode Oliver walks up and vindicates both Thea and Quentin, noting that Oliver trusts his administration but the blame stops at him. Oh, and apparently the D.A. or something in Oliver's administration is one Adrian Chase, a.k.a. Vigilante. We don't see any vigilantism from the Vigilante here, but he's just portrayed as a good honest man wanting to do what's right and whatnot.

One of the biggest weakness is dropping Wild Dog, Starling and Ragman all at once on our lap without developing them enough. Ragman got an origin story and an emotional moment last week, and Starling was a one-off villain, but we're still kind of eeeh about their personalities. Wild Dog gets the biggest brunt of screentime in both this and the previous episode as the brash, young foil to Oliver's stern leadership, dragging the impressionable Starling off with him to bust some crimes. Yes, Oliver trusting Wild Dog's call might've avoided this whole mess, but so would Wild Dog actually listening to orders. Both sides apologize to each other after a period of conflict, which I hope won't be happening every episode. Let one of the other dudes have the conflict with Ollie.

Derek Sampson, the villain of the week, is just a brand-new character created for the show, apparently to give a wrestler that fought Stephen Amell a role as an antagonist. He's going around selling Stardust, a super-awesome drug that's Vertigo tenfold, and Wild Dog's short-sighted pursuit turned him into a metahuman taht can't feel pain, as well as causing him to be able to dodge Adrian Chase's legal clutches. He's not that much of a threat, to be honest, other than the initial surprise on Oliver, and Oliver gets a pretty cool moment of rappelling him up and punching him to the ground, as well as noting how not being able to feel pain doesn't mean he doesn't need those tendons and muscles.

And as cool as it is to have Neo Team Arrow in action (including Ragman ragging people with magic rag tendrils) the absolute coolest thing is Curtis Holt, dressed in his Mister Terrific getup. We get a brief name-drop to the first Mister Terrific, a wrestler in this continuity, but the talk about the Fair Play motto gets brought up. And he actually wears that stupid, goofy-ass T-shaped mask that's pasted onto his face! Oh my god, it's the one thing that I thought the show wouldn't be able to adapt properly, but they did! And it looks so fucking good, as much as a black T pasted onto someone's face can look good.

Speaking about all the trust that Wild Dog and Oliver have with each other, Felicity and Curtis talk about how Ragman hails from Havenrock (with some glorious awkwardness from Curtis), and at the end of this episode Felicity reveals her complicity in Havenrock's destruction to Ragman. It's nice that it's not going to be dragged out for the whole season like the past four Arrow seasons where secrets are stretched for what they're worth, and I hope this gets to become something interesting.

The Bratva flashback plot shows how Oliver needs to trust the Bratva brotherhood, allowing the Bratva members to get close to Oliver's unprotected back and trust them to carve just enough to make a tattoo, and apparently Anatoli shows that the people that the Bratva killed in the initiation are actually murderers that are saved by association to their mutual enemy, Constantine Kovar. Though the hilariously wide smile on that old lady's face when Anatoli shows her a bullet-ridden boy while going "I'm here to talk about your boy" is such a wack scene until it's revealed that the dead Bratva initiate was the murderer of her boy.

So yeah. The lack of Prometheus and Tobias Church means that this episode felt more filler-y. Stardust is throwaway, and the surprise appearance of Deadshot is a bait-and-switch. It's more to build up the connection between our heroes, which, considering it's starring a brand new cast, is breathing room that the show definitely needed. Maybe it could do more work with, say, cutting out some of the pointless plot arcs like the Thea/Mayor Oliver one. It's a decent episode, that's for sure.



DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Adrian Chase is the secret identity of the Vigilante, the second superhero to use that name. The first is a cowboy, whereas Adrian Chase is more of a street-level vigilante. More on him when we actually meet him in a suit. 
• Terris Sloane is the first, Golden Age era Mr. Terrific, whereas Michael Holt took over the mantle from him in the modern day. Curtis's costume here nails the comic-book version of Michael Holt quite awesomely, with the Fair Play jacket and the silly-but-still-awesome T pasted to his face.
• There's a fair amount of meta humour here, where Oliver seems to genuinely like Wild Dog's hockey mask, a reference to Oliver's actor Stephen Amell playing the hockey mask wearing Casey Jones in TMNT 2 earlier this year. Derek Sampson's actor is played by a wrestler whose stage name was 'Stardust', which is referenced in the name of the drug he's selling.

Supergirl S02E02 Review: Outnumbering the Enemy

Supergirl, Season 2, Episode 2: The Last Children of Krypton

Can I just say that I really, really enjoy Supergirl and Superman's team-ups in this episode? Especially the first few scenes, where they just zoom in, save a burning building, and then stop a bunch of robbers by having one of them stand in front of the car, then the other swooping in behind the car (with Superman adorably apologizing for the dented fenders!), basically just standing as bullets are unleashed, and Superman asking the eternal question: why try a punch when bullets clearly just failed?

Of course, it's not all fun and games, as Superman's charisma doesn't stick with J'onn and Alex, despite the latter adorably crushing on Superman a couple of points earlier in this episode. The two characters have different kinds of beef, with J'onn's beef not being personal and only out of pragmatism, whereas Alex's problem is far, far more personal and a very emotional one. 

J'onn and Superman continue their little antagonism from last episode, but the episode also makes a pretty cool point of showing that J'onn still respects Superman, like learning Kryptonian and chronicling what little he knows of Superman's deceased homeworld. But Superman makes it clear that he considers J'onn keeping Kryptonite as a breach of trust, asking J'onn why they can't just trust each other and work together (and maybe found a League of Justice, recruit a bunch of superheroes from the sister shows?). J'onn does raise a good point about how there are threats that even Superman can't handle, like Non during the climax of the first season, but their little team-up this episode (more on that later) ended up causing J'onn to trust Superman and give all the Kryptonite to him. It's a variation of the Batman/Superman conflict from the movie with the same name, but on the other hand, with J'onn and Supergirl around, it's obvious that Superman isn't quite the same god-versus-man like he was in the movie world, meaning the lack of Kryptonite at J'onn's disposal is more of an inconvenience more than crippling them should Superman get mind-controlled or something. 

Alex starts to feel overshadowed by Superman as the main sibling-figure, especially at one point when Supergirl considers moving away to Metropolis with Superman, causing her to pull the 'I sacrificed so much for you!' It's a bit odd for Alex to go from fanboying Superman to throwing an angry fit (which, to be fair, was actually well-acted as far as these things go) but her disdain at being replaced after all she has done is believable. Alex later gets a short, personal scene with Winn, who, as a foster child himself, tells Alex that family isn't about keeping score about who sacrificed the most -- something that all families can relate to -- and how "look at what we did for you" is kind of entitled for people to say. It's a strangely well-written scene for something that really should've been sappy and would be absolutely irritating if it were written by the season one team. Of course, there's still a bit of a wonky moment when they move from fangirl!Alex to jealous!Alex to robotsuit!Alex, but hey.

Alex herself gets to be relevant to the plot as she goes off on her own and discovers the whole Cadmus plot, and it's all but spelled out that her father has joined up with Cadmus willingly. She does get a bit of a badass "what, kill aliens? I killed Astra of krypton, what do you people got?".

Superman is fun, but he makes it clear in this episode that he's leaving -- both as Superman and as Clark. After all, he can't stay forever, not unless the show gets a rebrand into Super-Cousins. Which, by the way, I would totally prefer. Superman is awesome!

We get a two-way team-up as Superman teams up with Supergirl to fight... Metallo! Complete with half-cyborg body and a kryptonite heart that shoots beams. It's a very cool fight scene that makes the best use of its lower budget... and honestly looks a lot better than the nonsense kryptonian fighting of season 1. The climax has two Metallos in play, one fighting Supergirl and Alex, and the other fighting J'onn and Superman. It's just very awesome, even if the second Metallo's existence and inclusion took me by absolute surprise. The Metallos are mostly just imposing physical threats that justify the two Supers needing backup (and how cool is it to see Superman and Martian Manhunter on-screen?). Cadmus might be a generic alien-hating organization with too much power than they should have, but they are already miles and miles better than Astra, Non and Maxwell. Not quite super-awesome yet, but still, not a bad effort.

Also cool is Superman's Fortress of Solitude, with the large ice sculpture of Jor-El and Lara, and Martian Manhunter just visiting the place. It's a shame that Superman leaves the show so soon after his introduction, but I guess the sight of his precious Metropolis being assaulted by the second Metallo and his monument being kind of fucked up sobered him to having to work in his old stomping grounds again.

The CatCo scenes are still, as ever, the weakest part of the show. I have no actual problems with Cat Grant as a character other than sometimes her dialogue tends to be way too preachy. And we get a long, long, long set of scenes devoted to how she's leaving the show. Er, company. Kara's "OMG ARE YOU DYING" expression is hilarious as all hell, and I guess the two separate farewells from Kara and Supergirl are okay... but it kind of ran for too long, I think, with the sole saving grace is that it's a character actually being written out. We also get introduced to Kara's reporter boss, which is Snapper Carr, a very, very unexpected arrival to the show. He's nothing much but a hardass dick-boss, though, and the struggles of seeing Kara trying to deal with an asshole boss? Not really interesting in the slightest. 

James Olsen takes over Cat's actual job, and I totally forgot he existed. The Cat Co scenes already don't interest me at all, especially in all the far more interesting arcs surrounding Supergirl, Superman, J'onn, Alex, Cadmus, two Metallos and the mysterious Kryptonian boy that suddenly woke up. Overall, it's a pretty strong and enjoyable episode, and while Cadmus and the entirety of the CatCo nonsense are both still unimpressive, the superhero fighting scenes more than make up for it. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Readers who follow my Justice League reviews are undoubtedly familiar with Snapper Carr, a recurring reporter character in that cartoon. In the comics, Snapper is a supporting character in the earliest Justice League of America comics, just this little kid who hangs out and snaps his fingers a lot, before he was retooled into a traitor, and later a reporter.
• I mentioned Cadmus a bit last episode, and it's a military-science organization dedicated to creating superhumans for the American government to combat extraterrestrial threats, and has featured in many DC cartoons like Justice League Unlimited and Young Justice, though it originally began as a Superman antagonist. Despite their very villainous portrayal here, in the source material they were a slightly less moral version of the DEO.
• Superman cradling Supergirl, of course, is an image familiar to comic book fans, the iconic death of the first Supergirl during Crisis of Infinite Earths. 

One Piece 843 Review: Whipped Cream Man

One Piece, Chapter 843: Vinsmoke Sanji

This chapter opens with Luffy absolutely annihilating Cracker, sending him flying... all the way back to Whole Cake Island, upon which he lands smack dab in Big Mom's castle, sending the members of Big Mom's family into a frenzy and putting the city on lockdown. We also get the names of the other main commanders of Big Mom's army -- Snack (who was taken out by Urouge prior to everything here), and the two active ones, Lord Katakuri (Potato Starch) and Lord Smoothie. LORD SMOOTHIE! How do you even go through your childhood named "Smoothie"? We don't see any of these powerful dudes, though we do get the names of a bunch of Big Mom's children that we briefly see in previous chapters. We've got this crazy jester-looking dude, Mont Dor the Minister of Cheese. We've got this generic-looking lady with a fur coat and devil horns, Galette the Minister of Butter... and the huge melty dude is Opera, the Minister of Whipped Cream.

Holy shit, and I thought it would be dumb to have an organization all focused on different kinds of sweets. Not if we get things like ministers of whipped cream, that's for sure!

Apparently Big Mom's Vivre Card is so potent that none of the other children are allowed to even carry one, which begs the question to why Chapati Lola has one. Also apparently Big Mom has powerful storm powers, which she used in conjunction with Cracker's fleet to take revenge on Snack's defeat on Urouge's hands. Apparently Big Mom has the powers to control the weather, and her two hands can summon Zeus the thunder cloud and Prometheus the sun.

Now this is a bit strange, since we all know Big Mom has soul-soul powers. Is this just an extension of her soul ability? We did see Big Mom with a (very friendly and not at all demonic) cartoon sun in her first introduction, is that Prometheus, and it's just a particularly powerful Homie? Is she dual-wielding devil fruits like Blackbeard? Is she using some kind of Vinsmoke-style technology? Interesting. 

There's a bit of a recap on where Luffy's group has gone off in search of Sanji which is a bit unnecessary, and a bit where Nami is talking to Chopper and Carrot via a mirror where they claim that they are totally fine [insert sounds of violence] despite being chased around by Brulee. Luffy metabolizes all the stupid gigantic balloon fat away, which is great. This middle bit is a bit unnecessary, to be honest, but we do need some filler scenes to allow for the time passing between Luffy's group recovering from fighting Cracker to hunting down the Germa 66 carriage.

And, of course, all three of Sanji's brothers go all lovey-dovey at the mere sight of Nami. Luffy pops up and speaks to Sanji, and we alternate between panels of the threats that Big Mom and the Vinsmoke family makes to the people that Sanji cares about, to Sanji's face while Luffy does a very cheerful recap. This ends with Sanji forcing himself to kick Luffy off the carriage, and do a big "I'm the Prince of the Vinsmoke family, you god damned peasants!" and this goes on for a page, where he pretends to be this high and mighty doucehole, and prepares to fight Luffy. I do hope this isn't an inferior repeat of the Ennies Lobby arc (just mixing together Usopp and Robin's role in that arc) because so far One Piece has been great in homaging the pre-grand-line stories with the post-grand-line stories while still keeping things fresh. And honestly as much as I want Luffy and Sanji fight it all out, I also want these characters to be smart and, like, pass a message to each other or something.

Regardless, though, pretty cool chapter. 

The Flash S03E03 Review: Jesse Quick vs Magenta

The Flash, Season 3, Episode 3: Magenta

For the past, oh, ten to fifteen years, I've always thought that Magenta's name was Magneta. Like, y'know, she's got magnetic powers, like, y'know, magnet? Like Magneto? It was not until thirty minutes ago that I realized her name was magenta. Like the colour.

Bit of a hilarious moment for me personally, also probably a lot of you think I'm a huge geek for even knowing who Magenta is. Oh well.

It's a bit of a simpler episode for this week, a simple fight-an-enemy with a new guest star, and the little fanboy in me is on the moon for seeing Jesse Quick literally run back into this show with super-speed. After the show having pussyfooting around the fact that Wally and Jesse are going to be speedsters, it's a very, very welcome moment of vindication when Jesse Quick's first act in returning to the show is to zoom around in yellow lightning. Bringing in a relatively faithful adaptation of a Flash antagonist I really like is also very welcome.

And honestly, after so many episodes of either card-carrying villains with convoluted plans (Zoom, Alchemy) or simple one-dimensional enemies (Rupture, Black Siren, Geomancer) it's nice to have some depth to one of the villains. I dunno. Maybe it's just because I like Magenta, but it's nice to see her story unfold, from being treated like shit by her asshat foster father, to her confusion as the Frankie and Magenta personas clash in their heads, to the absolutely awesome visual image of dropping a goddamned cruise liner on top of a hospital... yeah, the split personality is a bit hackneyed, and the conclusion was a bit too obvious, but it was a lot more fun than Alchemy skulking in the background or Rival being a douche. 

Also, Alchemy is a lot effective here spending 100% of the episode off-screen and just being this mysterious corruptor that fucked Magenta up, and is implying that he'll gun for Wally soon (which, by the way, is a huge dick and moronic move on Barry's part not to tell Wally or Joe about this). Certainly far more impressive than his underwhelming one-note appearance last episode.

Plus the lack of angsty drama and the focus mostly on Magenta's personal problems, as well as Harrison having to accept that Jesse Wells is now Jesse Quick is a lot more relatable and interesting than Barry moping because he fucks up the timeline. And the return of Harrison Wells is just a huge blessing as he brings back an ample amount of snark (including at Barry's moronic decision to incite Flashpoint in the first place) and some daddy issues with Jesse. Harry and Jesse are basically top-notch this episode. 

And I do love the scene of Jesse Quick creating a huge vortex to lift up the tanker while Barry talks Magenta down, a nice unique show of how the Flash can't just speed down and punch a non-speedster villain in the face -- the tanker hanging over the hospital is kind of the unique problem superheroes need to deal with, plus justifies the fact that Barry needs a second speedster to help him out.

Plus Jesse Quick is awesomesauce. Can't deny that.

Barry and Iris's constantly-interrupted dates were whatever, but fortunately, y'know, they were constantly-interrupted. Still not sold on Draco Malfoy (whose name in this show I literally forgot and can't be bothered to look up before next week), who seemed to be Mr. Exposition and a British Eddie Thawne, as much as I love Tom Felton. Which, by the way... Draco's totally Alchemy, right? He's the obvious choice, but I really don't want the "ally character turns out to be the secret identity of the mysterious villain" the way we had Harrison Wells/Reverse-Flash in season one and Fake!Jay Garrick/Zoom in season two. It's honestly gotten very, very tiresome, and if Draco turns out to be Alchemy it would be monumentally dumb. 

Joe got a couple of great lines (including the "second daughter" line which made me laugh so hard), and Wally got a short but important moment of trying to trigger his speed by walking in front of a car. Again, very dickish of Barry not to tell anyone what Wally was in the Flashpoint, but at least the borderline-suicidal hero complex and the fact that Wally died in Flashpoint are somewhat believable reasons... but Wally was being kind of an idiot in that scene even if Jesse was literally a second away from saving him. I dunno. That felt a bit forced, though Wally talking and being buddies with Jesse was a really great scene.

Caitlin gets a lot of screentime here, too, where he tries to talk to Jesse about taking powers slow, a reflection of how she's in denial about her Killer Frost powers, and her exploding at Harrison Wells for not being accepting and treating powers like a curse that will kill Jesse is very, very melancholic considering the sudden in-universe retcon to Caitlin's being. Caitlin Snow is a character that was easily one of the best supporting characters in the show's first season, only really facing competition from Joe West, Evil!Harrison Wells and Martin Stein... but was supremely butchered in the show's second season. Here's hoping she'll get a lot more relevance and great lines in this one.

Overall, it's definitely a step in the right direction after the huge, long-winded Flashpoint nonsense. Really hoping to see more of Jesse Quick and Magenta in future episodes, really hoping Wally and Caitlin become Flash and Killer Frost quickly, and, of course, Harrison Wells. 

Teen Titans S01E07 Review: Scarface's Creepy Demon Brother

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 7: Switched

No, Teen Titans is not a very... logical show, simply put. It runs on on Rule of Funny, basically a non-campy version of Superfriends. It's hard to compete with the far more story-driven and character-driven Justice League, yet both shows have very legitimate ways to show great character storytelling. And Switched is a great example. On the surface, it's your basic zany plotline. Two characters get their souls switched and have to learn to live each other's life and maybe get some moral out of it... except the Teen Titans live in a giant T-shaped building with no civilian life to speak of, so Raven and Starfire are forced to literally learn about each other to learn how to survive, because the two -- beyond being both girls -- have powers very tied to their emotions. And it's a great moment of character building as we see Starfire forced to have some control over her hyperactivity lest Raven's emotion-based demon powers go wild, and Raven is forced to lighten up a little from her somber disposition to activate Tamaranean powers that are empowerd by the SENSE OF GLORIOUS HAPPINESS.

This episode mixes things up a little by having Raven and Starfire fight not a villain, but rather the mind-controlled feral bodies of their teammates. Local villain Puppet King isn't much of a threat (though I really, really want to know the origin story of this particular demonic doll) but he traps the souls of Robin, Beast Boy and Cyborg in mini-dolls and sics the bodies to hunt down Raven and Starfire 

It's a standard episode as Raven and Starfire learn to lean away from the extremes of their respective emotional spectrums, a nice little story that ended with Puppet King being violently exorcised and having his soul ripped out and sent to the tenth circle of hell, but it's an entertaining, charming little episode.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• We don't hear the whole story of Raven's origin (BOO!) but we did learn that she was raised in Azarath.

Teen Titans S01E06 Review: Scary Mind-Land

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 6: Nevermore

I think this is one of my favourite episodes of this season. We now turn the spotlight squarely on Raven, who hasn't really done much but fight and deliver snarky comments for the past five episodes. We start off with the Teen Titans fighting the hilariously goofy Dr. Light*, a dude with a freaking light bulb logo on his chest... who ends up pissing Raven off, causing her to flip off and transform into this towering, growling mass of demonic shadowy tentacles that show us that, shit, Raven's scary. And both the visuals and Raven's voice acting, as well as Dr. Light being absolutely horrified and trembling and practically catatonic when Raven spat him out... yeah.

We know Raven's powers are more magical than the others, with her chanting magical words (Azarath Metrion Zinthos) every time she summons her shadow powers, but this is the first episode that really explored all the magical things surrounding Raven. It's an amazing episode, really, and we sideline two of the Titans, Robin and Starfire, to focus more on Beast Boy, Cyborg and Raven. After the initial Dr. Light sequence, Robin and Starfire are relegated to a running gag where we get variations of Starfire going all 'can we see Raven?' and Robin goes 'we shouldn't bug her, she said she wants to be alone.'

Beast Boy attempts to apologize to Raven for calling her weird -- the kid's a bit of a jerk but he's ultimately kind-hearted. And Cyborg kinda has to be the big brother that forces Beast Boy to apologize. But they instead get sucked into a weird mirror that leads into Raven's psyche, which is what Wonderland would look like if Tim Burton designed it. It's desolate, with weird outcroppings and creepy four-eyed demonic (actual) ravens, and aspects of Raven's personality like her insecurities, her jolliness and her badass sides all running around. These all represent parts of Raven's personality, and we see from all the separate emotion-Ravens and from the real Raven herself that despite the tough emo goth persona she shows, deep down she has, y'know, emotions.

Emotions like actually feeling upset when Beast Boy insults her, some insecurities in being afraid that Beast Boy doesn't like her (shipper horns sound!) and having a funny jokey side underneath it all. It is displayed pretty well throughout the series that no matter how much she is visibly annoyed by Beast Boy's antics, no matter how much she wants to be alone in her room all the time, she still likes being part of the Teen Titans and being part of this dysfunctional family.

Of course, Raven's... anger? Hate? The red-cloaked version of her, anyway, apparently is running rampant in Raven's psyche world after (or during) the dr. Light battle, and it manifests in an image of her father... a gigantic red-skinned deer-horned demon in a loincloth. Which, of course, foreshadows Raven's demonic father Trigon and Trigon's actual later appearance in the show, but it's a great, surreal bit as Raven learns to trust her friends more and manages to find peace with all her separate personality fragments and become a white-robed version of herself.

It's a great, powerful episode. What can I say? It's pretty amazing. Having the two polar opposites of the team -- the self-reserved, snarky, lone wolf, all-business Raven having to interact and deal with Beast Boy, the hyperactive prankster that keeps running his mouth and insulting people? While we get a surreal look into Raven's mind? And we get some really hellish imagery and a cameo of a future villain and hints of Raven's mysterious demonic past? It's all pretty awesome, and I remember this episode quite vividly for its pretty surreal tone even ten years after the fact.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Doctor Light, real name Arthur Light, was a villain that used technology to manipulate light in combat, first emerging as an enemy of the Justice League before being such a memetic loser that he was 'degraded' into a frequent enemy of the Teen Titans, and then even further until he was kicked out of a supervillain team he founded to fight the Titans, and was beaten by a group of non-powered children. And all this while he has the control of motherfucking light. He joined Suicide Squad and almost immediately got killed and sent to hell, brought back to life only to suffocate to death inside his own grave, brought back to life again and defeated by the heroic Dr. Light and stuffed inside a ring. Then came Identity Crisis, which retcon Dr Light to be... well, more sinister (he raped the wife of one of the heroes, for fuck's sake), and his incompetence was the result of several members of the Justice League lobotomizing him with magic. Then Dr. Light ended up being a monstrous fucker of a human being whose every second word is 'rape' and goes around killing children. Man, I get that you want people to take Dr. Light seriously but come on. The dude's symbol is a light bulb. That's like the last person you want to turn into a serial rapist.
• Raven's manifestation of rage takes the form of the demon Trigon. Revealing any more about him would spoil season four for us, so let's not go into that. 
• Raven wearing a white costume actually reflects a costume change she makes partway through New Teen Titans, though she eventually reverts back to black.

Pokemon Top Ten: Best and Worst of Generation V

As we grow closer and closer to the release of the seventh generation of Pokemon games (and apparently someone hacked into the demos and pulled out the entire Alolan Pokedex?), I've been doing listings of my top ten favourite Pokemon for each generation. This time, it's for Generation V, arguably the black sheep of the Pokemon family. While opinion of the fifth generation had grown far more favourably over the years, Generation V tries to shake up the formula... a bit too much. Featuring the introduction of way more Pokemon than any individual single generation before, the new region of Unova had absolutely none of the older Pokemon. No Pikachu. No Zubats and Geodudes in the caves. No Magikarp in the water. It's a bit of a shocking move, and while ultimately a great move that moved Pokemon in a fresher direction, the fact that a fair amount of the new Pokemon felt so similar in typing and abilities and place in lore as many previous Pokemon, and arguably uglier designs, including an abundance of Pokemon designed after inanimate objects, caused a huge rift with older fans.

Personally, I played Generation IV and V in one big marathon slightly before the release of VI, and while I kind of felt the strange oddity of not being able to meet any of the old faces, I was a bit excited to see the 200-300+ new creatures that I missed during my absence as a Pokemon trainer, so it wasn't that big of a problem. Besides, Generation V has a lot of good designs along with the bad, and this list is to celebrate ten of my favouties.

Previous listings: Gen I, Gen 2, Gen 3, Gen 4


#10 Serperior
My starter of choice in my journey through Unova is Serperior, and it's a choice that I made almost entirely based on design. I have never liked Emboar's design, with it looking more like a walking furnace than a pig warrior, and Samurott, while cool, felt a wee bit over-designed and I never liked otters anyway. I've warmed up to those two over the years, but they still won't make it if I ever did a top ten starters list. Serperior, on the other hand? I've always liked reptiles, and Snivy just looks so hilariously snobbish! It's also a very cool, simple design. Just sharp angles, greens and yellows, and turning into Serperior he just looks like a freaking sir. He just looks so regal, looking down on the enemy, and he's a giant king snake. It's a very cool concept that shows how much Nintendo researches the creatures they base the Pokemon on, with Serperior embodying constrictor snakes or tree snakes that aren't poisonous. Most games just go with the common conception that "snake = poison", and it's a nice nod to the variety in nature.

Sadly, Serperior... isn't very powerful. My journey through Pokemon White was absolutely painful, and I relied less and less on my Serperior as my heavy hitter and more on the other partners that I made throughout the journey. She actually became a bit of a dead weight around the middle and later stages of the game, with very little that a pure Grass-type with a very restricted moveset can do. I still love my Serperior (who I nicknamed Nagini) but I also remember the hours of frustration as Serperior failed to perform in the way that my previous badass starters like Venusaur, Torterra and Swampert did. Oh well. Fighting is for peasants anyway. My Serperior is a fucking queen.

#9 Scolipede
I like bugs, and I cannot lie! Scolipede borrows his name from the Latin family/genus of centipedes in taxonomy, Scolopendra (his Japanese name is Pendra, taking the back half) and is a very awesome-looking centipede. Some centipedes actually do the 'raise my front body' posture that Scolipede is permanently stuck in, so it isn't so much as making a silly centipede-centaur as being an actual adaptation of a real-life animal. And it's been so, so long since we got a badass bug, with the last genuinely powerful bug-type being Heracross all the way back in Generation II. Generation IV had a couple of decent ones like the speedy Yanmega and the bulky Vespiquen, but none that are actually a powerhouse. Scolipede is a starter bug, so he isn't as powerful as some of the other badass bugs introduced in Generation V, but damn, Scolipede is a pretty powerful centipede. He's a physical monster that poisons anything that touches it (in Generation VI he even gets the ability Speed Boost, what the hell!) while launching devastating Megahorns, Earthquakes and Poison Tails at anything that looks at it funny. There is a reason that the BW anime had Scolipede took over Beedrill and Ursaring's duties as the local 'scary Pokemon that chases people around'. He's a 2.5 meter tall centipede monster that is vicious and poisonous.

No, it's not the most powerful Pokemon out there, but I did have a fairly fun time with a Scolipede during my runs through Generation V. I nicknamed my Scolipede "Scolopendra" based on the latin word that it's derived from, because I'm a geek that way.

#8 Excadrill
I never really cared for Excadrill until a randomized Nuzlocke of Black 2, where an Excadrill was one of the big MVPs of my team. Rumble, my Excadrill, was an absolute beast. At the end of the game, Rumble was Swords Dancing to power up his horrifying retinue of Earthquake, Metal Claw and Rock Slide, basically dropping in and taking names of anything that isn't a Fighting, Fire or Water type. Excadrill is just an awesome design, definitely a far cooler mole Pokemon than Dugtrio. Drillbur is a bit derpy, but Excadrill just screams business. From his three gigantic metallic blade-claws, to the angry mouse face he has, to the gigantic metal stabby thing on his forehead, he's just scowling, ready to rend the enemy to shreds with his gigantic metal claws. Before I used him, I just brushed him off as 'cool looking metal mole', but man, he's definitely grown to be one of my favourite Pokemon thanks to the Nuzlocke run. I absolutely love his animation of his Black/White sprite, too, where he's just opening and closing his blade-claw-fingers, like he's just itching for a fight.

#7 Volcarona

Remember three paragraphs above about how I said that Generation V introduced a lot of badass bugs? Volcarona is the epitome of that. Volcarona is a supremely powerful monster that I was surprised to discover that she's not a legendary. Really could've fooled me. She's got a very high base stat total that rival some legendaries and pseudo-legendaries, she's placed near the end of the Pokedex, she's located at the end of a dungeon on a throne similar to most legendary encounters, she's supremely powerful, the true champion of the game uses one and she's got a signature move to boot. And look at her! She's like this sun moth goddess, just looking so regal and powerful despite being, y'know, a fucking butterfly. Volcarona is just a fancy-looking design, incorporating the orange-red shading of the wings very well, and its very insectoid and alien-looking eyes and those... weird.. collar things on the sides of its head makes it look truly like a monster. It's one of the highest-level encounters in the game, at the end of the mysterious Relic Castle, and wow, what an absolutely awesome beast it is. Between burning people to death with Heat Waves and Flamethrowers, to destroying people with Bug Buzz, launching Hurricanes and Solar Beams, or buffing herself to insane power levels with her signature move Fiery Dance... Volcarona is absolutely a beast to face on the battlefield, and woe betide you if you don't have access to Rock-type moves when you face this monster. She also evolves at an absurdly high level, though, IIRC the highest level (or the second-highest) that a Pokemon can evolve. My Volcarona in White is named Inferno, and I think the one I raised in Y is named Mothula.

#6 Hydreigon

Hydreigon is just awesome. Deino looks goofy as all hell with its weird awkward emo hair and patchy fur, but Hydreigon? Fucking hell, Hydreigon is just a badass looking monster. It's the type of complex-yet-simple designs that I absolutely love. Only three colours -- black, dark blue and dark purple -- which I guess is appropriate for a three-headed dragon, but all three synchronize very well together to just scream "EVIL DRAGON RUN!" And Hydreigon is an evil dragon. It's dark and dragon type, it's used as the most powerful Pokemon as the main villain, and all its Pokedex entries focus on just how destructive and powerful it is. And it's got these very cool legs that just taper off, and giant wings that... aren't traditional bat wings, just these rows of protruding... things, and the cool flower-rim around its dragon heads... even its lore is creepy, with a bit of a focus on how the two Zweilous heads used to fight each other for dominance, Hydreigon's central head has taken over, reducing the two smaller heads to, well, hands, basically. It's a three-headed hydra monster, and one of the most powerful Pokemon out there. I mean, it gets absolutely wrecked by Moonblasts, but fuck that, Hydreigon looks awesome. I've never really trained one, just captured one for the Pokedex, but damn. Hydreigon is cool.

(Yeah, this list is just going to be filled with super-powerful cool-looking monsters. Sorry, but Black and White did introduce a lot of cool-looking powerhouses.)

#5 Haxorus
Haxorus is a Tyrannosaurus rex dragon with a beak, armour plates, and two gigantic sickles strapped onto the sides of its beak. I'm not sure which one among Hydreigon and Haxorus, the two big final-evolution dragons in Generation V, I like better. I think Hyrdeigon has a cooler design due to the hydra concept, but Haxorus is awesome mostly because I raised one as a member of my party in White. It's golden and black, just this armoured dragon, with red on the edges of its sickle-fangs and claws. Like it's blood caked on them or something. I didn't get Haxorus as high a level as I would've liked and he kind of sat out a chunk of the final legs of the game simply because of level differences with the rest of my team, but I still love Axe the Haxorus. I'm not very keen on either Axew or Fraxure, but its sudden evolution into Haxorus, losing the weird banana-sideways-fangs and green colouring and being this super-powered armoured dinosaur dragon is just awesome.

In Black 2 and White 2 they basically give you a shiny Haxorus for free, and it's jet-black and absolutely looks awesome as all hell.

#4 Galvantula
I love, love, love Joltik and Galvantula. Joltik is just this little fuzz-ball that's smaller than your hand, just hanging out with you and it's easily the cutest bug of all. Galvantula is it all grown up into a four legged spider (those things in front of his head are pedipalps), and holy shit Galvantula is adorable. This from someone who used to have a fear of spiders. Galvantula is mainly yellow, with a bit of blue and purple fur around, and it's got two big eyes in addition to a bunch of smaller ones, four big chunky legs and it's just so adorable! I loved Galvantula even before a bunch of pretty cool Nuzlocke comic artists made him adorable, and its ability of Compound Eyes makes every single fucking Thunder that comes off of this fuzzball hit its mark every single time, allowing me to see the very cool Thunder animation all the time. It's an electric spider! It's a pretty cool thing.

Sadly, competitively Galvantula is a bit of a glass cannon, having relatively shitty defense and HP (and the fact that Rock, Ground and Fire are all very common offensive types), but when it strikes and murders things, it does so still being an adorable fuzzy spider with goggly eyes. My male Galvantula in White is called Tobi (after Tobey MacGuire, the actor that played Spider-Man in the older movies) and my female Galvantula in Y is called Emma (after Emma Stone, who played Gwen Stacy in the newer Spider-Man movies).

#3 Zekrom
Zekrom is awesome. Reshiram always felt like the artist was trying to cram too many feathery wings into the design while having way too spindly arms, trying to look feminine yet still super-tough at the same time and not quite approaching a good balance. Kyurem is weirdly cool, but not enough to reach top ten. (Black/White Kyurem are messy shits, though). But Zekrom? I just love Zekrom. From the powerful jawed face, to the cool different shades of black around its armoured body, to the powerful, edgy and kinda robotic wings, to the wing-shaped gauntlet-things above it claws, to its actually cool-looking drill tail engine... there is a reason I picked Pokemon White over Pokemon Black.

Zekrom is just pure badass, and in Generation V, with its abundance of weirdly proportioned, overdesigned legendaries, Zekrom is one of the few that I genuinely love. Genesect is kinda good, basic Kyurem is cool (ha!), Terrakion and Therian!Thundurus are okay, and I really like Victini for some reason, but Zekrom is the one that simply blows me away. It's just cool looking, this powerful jet-black electric dragon that will lay waste to your enemies, either by clawing them to death with Dragon Claw, or surrounding himself with a ball of blue lightning and just ramming the opponents. It's just a weird shame that neither Zekrom, Reshiram and Kyurem are able to learn Earthquake despite being the three most powerful dragons of ideals and justice or whatever in Unova. Yeah, some game balance and all that, but Zekrom and his two siblings are supposed to be like powerful dragon gods! And they can't shake the Earth? They give Earthquakes to non-ground-type legendaries, so that's no excuse. You know who can make Earthquakes? Fucking Ekans, who is a little baby snake. (Rant over)

Anyway, Zekrom is awesome. I dunno. He just looks consistently awesome in all the games he appears in.

#2 Zoroark
Zoroark is in a pretty exclusive club with Lucario as non-legendary Pokemon that starred in a movie at the tail-end of the previous generation. Previous "preview" Pokemon that starred in movies have been legendaries, like Lugia and the Latis. Zoroark is this badass Japanese fox mama demon that stars in one of my favourite Pokemon movies. The plot's a bit weird that involves some douchebag human forcing her to commit atrocities to frame the three legendary dogs so that he can... get... Celebi... somehow? Poke-Quidditch is involved in a way or whatever. Okay, maybe it's not the best movie out there, but the Zoroark scenes are awesome. See, Zoroark is the master of illusions, which, in addition being pretty fucking awesome, also ties in with the fact that fox spirits are very common stories in Japanese, Chinese and Korean myths in a way that is probably similar to how vampires are in Western myths. Zoroark's design was a bit weird at first, with that huge blob of hair that's larger than Zoroark's body, but I've grown to love him a lot.

I actually associate Zoroark more with the sixth generation due to not having a Zoroark in my playthrough of Pokemon Black -- you need some event-exclusive shit to catch him, making him an event-exclusive non-legendary Pokemon until Black 2 and White 2. But Zoroark is a rare encounter, very appropriately, in the lost woods in XY, and quickly became the sixth member of my Pokemon Y party. He's called Loki, and he shoots powerful Night Dazes and Shadow Balls and Flamethrowers to one-shot people in Wi-Fi battles. In-game Zoroark isn't as badass as the movie version, taking on Entei, Raikou and Suicune and still surviving, and he's not as durable and powerful as Lucario, but I still love him. He hits hard, and has the defense of a paper hat, but his illusion abilities lets him appear as the sixth Pokemon in your party. The trick is to bait people to hit it with a Psychic move, which Zoroark is immune to, while Zoroark launches powerful special attacks to destroy them. My Zoroark in Y is called Loki, cause he's a dude that casts illusions. And I absolutely love him. He just looks so cool!

Honourable mentions before we get to number one...

• Ferrothorn is probably number 11 on this list. I dismissed him as a weird thing until I realized he's supposed to be this weird plant flail thing. I think partly it's his Gen V sprite with the tendril-spikes pointing upwards that makes him look weird, whereas his Gen VI sprite has the tendrils point downwards like spider legs, making him look infinitely cooler. But I like Ferrothorn. He's this Grass/Steel tank that is one of the Pokemon I bred for competitively, and I named mine Caesar (after the salad, and after Terry Crews' character in Expendables) and he's an absolute tank. Just throwing him out in battles and laugh as the enemy lose half their HP by running their Pokemon into Caesar, who barely loses any health, is hilarious. He dies at the slightest hint of a fire move, but he's an absolute spiky tank. In addition to being able to heal himself with Ingrain, Ferrothorn is the perfect user of Gyro Ball, being slow as hell and thus dealing a crapton of Steel damage to those pesky Azumarills. I love Ferrothorn. He really is #11 in my heart.
• Eelektross is another Pokemon I briefly used in White before I decide that Galvantula is 100% cuter and cooler. He's this monstrous hybrid of an electric eel and a lamprey, with that horrifying fanged leech-mouth. In Generation V he waddles on two weird fins that makes him a lot less scary, but in Generation VI he levitates in the air. He's also got no weaknesses, because he's a floating Electric-type.
• Whimsicott is adorable. I used one named Joaquin, during my run of White 2, and he's just this happy cotton ball fairy thing. I'm not sure just why I like Whimsicott, but I just do.
• Cofagrigus, Reuniclus and Golurk are all very weird, creepy yet awesome Pokemon. One is this sentient grinning Egyptian coffin with ghostly hands that spreads a zombie disease, one is a giant adorable fetus-cell psychic thing, and one is a robot ghost who can retract its limbs to fly around like Superman.  
• Scraggy is a Pokemon that I hated the design of until I saw it in the game, where its animation had its pant droop, and he pulls it up to his chin, and he lets go and the pants drops almost immediately. Also his face is hilarious! I'm not to fond of his voice in the anime, but I've grown to like the ridiculousness of Scraggy.
• Archen is a cute little Archaeopteryx Pokemon. Archeops is ugly as hell, but Archen is cute and based on an obscure dinosaur.
• Genesect is very cool, a robot insect resurrected from the past, like Jurassic Park meets the Terminator, but in insect form. He's got a huge laser cannon on his back that changes types, and can transform into a UFO. Shame his movie kind of sucks.
• Bisharp is a cool Steel-Dark warrior based on a chess piece. Also he's 90% sharp sickles by volume. And he's got cool elbow-blades. Bisharp's just awesome.

#1 Chandelure
Yeah, I have a lot of favourite Pokemon from Generation V, and I actually had to trim down that 'honourable mentions' list a fair bit. I think compared to Generation I and III (which isn't fair because they have nostalgia power), Generation V has the most favourite Pokemon by volume. It also has a lot of Pokemon I hate, of course, but let's talk about the good ones first. And my faovurite? Chandelure. If my older top ten lists are any indication, I really like Ghost-types. And chandeliers and candlesticks are a staple of most horror settings. Litwick is an adorable sentient candle, and it evolves into Lampent, which is... a streetlamp. But it evolves into Chandelure, which is this very awesome-looking chandelier, glowing with blue flames. It just looks so creepy and awesome, just floating in the air with those two blank eyes, and a mouth that's made up of the chandelier's grooves, but looks like a scarecrow-style mouth stitched together.

He looks freakin' fancy in 3D tho

His lore also makes him look awesomely creepy. He burns souls with his flames, and sometimes eats them! Chandelure is a supremely cool-looking design, and one of the biggest reasons that people should give Pokemon based on inanimate objects a chance. Sure, there are some failures like Probopass and Garbodor, but then there are awesome shit like Chandelure and Rotom that came out of it. Artworks of Chandelure abound that make great use of his glass-and-flame combination out there, and the way he looks you can just believe him to be like a butler-type Pokemon, or a scary soul-eating deathbringing demon... Chandelure is a straight-up glass cannon (see, he's made of glass, oh ho ho I'm so hilarious) with powerful Special Attack, launching Shadow Balls, Flamethrowers, Psychics and... Energy Balls? How does a soul-eating ghostly lamp able to launch grass balls oh never mind I don't care, it helps him deal with Water types. Chandelure is a supremely creepy Pokemon that looks cool at the same time, and it's got a great, unique typing. My Chandelure is called Fiendfyre, and he kicks ass. Chandelure is easily my main fighter in Pokemon White, moreso than my Serperior, and I like to imagine that Chandelure is some sort of battle butler to the regal Serperior, fighting her battles because my starter can't be bothered to fight like all you damn peasants.

Also, Chandelure is one of the few Pokemon that is included in the Pokken fighting game. This fucking ghost chandelier is in a fighting game. Over actual Fighting-types like, oh, Hitmonchan or Infernape or Medicham, or other sorts of iconic Pokemon. They put Chandelure in.
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I keep talking about how Generation V has a lot of bad in addition to it's good, so it's time for my...

Top ten least favourite Generation V pokemon! Yes, usually there are only five names here, but with Generation V there are ten that I hate. Some will come to no surprise as the 'Top Ten Least Favourite' that I did a fair while back is dominated by a lot of Generation V Pokemon, but man, there are a lot of ugly designs in Generation V.

You know what, we can even make a bit of a dishonourable mentions list.

• Keldeo! Keldeo is a stupid-looking baby horse, and I can't believe he's a Legendary. He's stupid, his movie makes him look like an incompetent twat, and his special super-powered form is also stupid. I dunno. I just dislike Keldeo, and normally I like horse Pokemon. But the whole 'three musketeers' story just didn't work for me, and I just dislike him.
• Thundurus, Tornadus and Landorus: in their normal forms, they are just uncreative onis that are basically palette swaps with a bit of changes in their tails. They just look dumb, and there are three of them. A single muscular thunder god would be cool, but having three? On an America-based expansion? It just doesn't make sense, and the three of them look dumb anyhow. Thundurus and Landorus are redeemed with their Therian forms, which both look cool, but Tornadus becomes an ugly green bird with a bra.
• Cubchoo, Beartric, Amoongus and Alomomola are just kind of ugly looking. Special mention go to Beartric's utterly stupid frozen-saliva-beard and weird dorito body proportions.
• Druddigon: I don't like the design, especially the weirdly randomly-red head, which looks so ugly, and the stumpy spike-wings.

I actually don't hate Trubbish and Vanniluxe's line, by the way. Trubbish is actually kinda cute, and the ice creams never bothered me. They look weird, for sure, but they're just kinda there. And the goths are nowhere as disturbing as Jynx is, and felt more like a variation of the Ralts/Kirlia/Gardevoir line, only with goths instead of ballerinas. Gothitelle being a big christmas tree is a bit weird, mind you.

#10 Palpitoad
Tympole is... weird. But not ugly. Seismitoad is ugly, but ugly in a pretty cool, gross hulking toad-monster way. Palpitoad? I don't know where they are aiming with Palpitoad. He doesn't even look like a tadpole or a frog, just this big phallic mess of... organs and tumours, with a face slapped on it. It just looks so fucking ugly, like a Quagsire that was born with a congenital disease or some shit. Ugh.

#9 Basculin
Fishing is a bit abandoned in the fifth generation, and reportedly Basculin was hurriedly created to fill in the lack of Magikarps, Carvanhas, Woopers and Goldeens. Every single goddamned body of water that isn't the sea in Unova is filled with nothing, and I do mean nothing, but Basculin. It's a cool-looking piranha-esque green fish, but it just felt so gimmicky. No evolution, sub-par stat-line, and it relies too much on the 'oh, Black gets one variation as the common subtype, White gets the other' gimmick to force itself to be interesting. When I barely even want one of these stupid things, why would I want both red and blue variations? Really, how hard is it to drum up an evolution? It doesn't even have to be good (Seaking isn't the most valuable of combatants), but at least it'll be something instead of being entirely throwaway. Basculin is.

#8 Swanna

It's a very uncreative thing, really. Let's draw a swan, and add some additional features. Sometimes you can get away with that in Pokemon, but you give her a seashell bra, some weird hair-bun and you call it a day? Jeez. People complain about the inanimate objects, but look at the amount of work that went into drawing Klinklang and making him look weird and cool, and just look at Swanna. She just looks like someone's angry grandma, especially with that default 'hands over hips' pose. Like Ferrothorn, Swanna has a better sprite in Generation VI, with her flying, but the seashell bra and the general lack of effort in making Swanna even look interesting just makes me dislike her.  

#7 Beheeyem
Pokemon based on aliens used to be cool-looking like Deoxys. I get that they're going for the Grays style of aliens, and Elgyem is kind of cute, even if he'll never be a thing I like... but Beheeyem? He's just ugly as hell, with a squashed head, a weird skirt, bulging eyes and a name that's so weird to pronounce. And the fact that it's just so ugly and forgettable, and absolutely outclassed by Reuniclus and Gothitelle as Generation V's psychic types, and the whole alien thing not even being mentioned anywhere, makes Beheeyem just this dumb thing that came along and was forgotten.

#6 Garbodor
I don't want to be like all those haters and go 'uhh, the garbage pokemon and the ice cream pokemon is dumbbbb' but man, Garbodor is ugly. Not as ugly as the five Pokemon down this list, and the gap between Garbodor and the ones after this is a very wide gap, but Garbodor looks like a bit of a mess. They tried too hard, with a stupid-looking face, and a body that's just... what, a gray blob with some random little objects shoved in? The asymmetrical arms and the different fingers (toilet rolls and metal wire) is a nice touch, but they don't quite portray the 'walking landfill golem' thing good enough and he just looks like a mound of... blobs. And its painful-looking face is, well, painful looking.

#5 Patrat & Watchog
These two. I generally never hate on the early-game rodent. They're meant to evolve quickly, to be easily dispatched of, and to be weak. Sometimes they get cool evolutions. Sometimes they're a bit doofy like Bidoof. But Bidoof's at least somewhat cute. Patrat is just disturbing with those eyes that stare into your soul. He just looks like he's in pain, and I just don't like him. Plus his cry is annoying, and he keeps spamming Detect like a little shit. Watchog is a bit better, but his expression and his tendency to Detect everything doesn't endear him to me either. Furret is a way better meerkat Pokemon than either Watchog or Patrat are, being far more adorable and fuzzy. Patrat just looks like something I'll call the exterminator to kill. For a longer talk about the ones from here down, click here.

#4 Gurdurr
Like Palpitoad, I hate Gurdurr, but not his pre-evolution and evolution. Sure, they are barely-disguised Machop-line expies, only with construction workers instead of wrestlers, and the silliness of having clown noses and having their block/girder/cement pillar thing evolve is kinda weird. It's a line that's honestly ranks pretty low in the 700+ Pokemon, but Conkeldurr looks kind of powerful, and Timburr is somewhat cool... but Gurdurr? His name itself is stupid. Durrrrr. His body proportions is dumb, with the legs being super tiny, his arms looking like balloons, his head looking like pulpy mess, his expression looking like he's in pain, his stupid, stupid arm veins... everything about this thing is stupid. There are three more I hate more on principle, but Gurdurr is easily the most stupid.

#3 Throh & Sawk
Man, these two ugly shits. They rip off Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan as a pair of similar-looking Fighting types representing a fighting style that are rivals but not related, but those two aren't even staples of Generation I you need to copy. And certainly not make them look so stupid. They don't make sense! Why do they wear clothes, why are their bodies rocky, what the fuck are those stupid black growths on their face, they look stupid, ugly and are absolutely badly designed. Not as deformed as Gurdurr is, but stupidity. One of them has Sturdy, but I can't be bothered to look up which one has them. They're both annoying.

#2 The Fucking Monkeys
Yeah, these three utter fuckers. I shoved my... Simi? Pan? Pour. Whichever is the smaller one. Into the box the moment it was dropped on my lap. What an utterly lame concept. A bunch of shitty-looking monkeys that represent the three main types, with only a bit of changes in their hairstyle and tail to represent their elements. No wonder an NPC had to give them out, no one of sound mind and health will want to willingly train one of these fuckers. Previous elemental trios like the original Eeveelutions, or the Elemental Dogs/Golems/Birds all have varieties in their designs. With the Simis/Pans, especially the pre-evolved forms, they just swap their colours and hairstyles. One of them closes their eyes. Big whoop. I'm not a big fan of monkeys, but these are ugly monkeys. Chimchar, Monferno and Infernape are such, such cooler realization of 'fire monkey' than these fuckers. It's a bit insulting to put this into the Unova Pokedex, really. They have so much good material already without having to pad out six slots with this fucking set of idiots.

#1 Bouffalant
Bouffalant is dumb. It's the Tauros expy in Generation V, and while I don't have much problems with the expies in Generation V (Gothitelle, Excadrill and Gigalith are different enough from Gardevoir, Dugtrio and Golem for me not to mind, and it's not like we've got expies before). Bouffalant copies Tauros as a rare, powerful pure-Normal type based on a bull. Tauros isn't the most creative Generation I Pokemon out there (it's a bull with three tails and a bunch of spots on its head. But just a bull). Bouffalant? He just slaps an afro onto his head, and puts rings on its horns. What a stupid shit! Who looks at this design and nodded, going 'yep, afro cow is a cool thing to put into the game!' And it's actually powerful, too. It's a monster. And I hate it when I get defeated by this utterly piece of shit. There's one thing to be defeated by Garchomps or Rotoms. Being killed by Bouffalant? It's annoying. Fuck this thing. Bouffalant is 100% the Pokemon I hate the most. I just hate this thing.